Owning Farm Animals

Background Information: Owning Chickens

Winnie is very fond of animals.  In fact, she seems to have this gene which enables her to choose pets that have the best personalities and they end up following her around like the Pied Piper.  We're convinced she has some kind of a future in animal husbandry.  Luckily, Winnie's mom Blair is also fond of animals since she gets to care for all of them.  And there seems to be a joint desire to have more and more of them.  Chickens are one of those joint projects and they have become the signature animal on Little House Farm.  Ethan has tried desperately to hold both Winnie and Blair back on the pet front, but he gave in on the chickens and the Jersey cow and.....Aunt HaHa is still working on the pigs and sheep.  Let's just put aside for the moment that Aunt HaHa is a vegetarian.

The idea of chickens came from Celeste, a family acquaintance, about three years ago.  Celeste owned chickens and she put the bug in Blair and Winnie's heads.  As it turns out this type of animal suits the family well. They are basically easy to care for, there have been very few mishaps and they remain healthy and quite wise.  Perhaps more importantly the neighbors like them because they grew up on farms in Vermont so it reminds them of their childhood and they get deliveries of farm fresh eggs.

There has been a bit of a learning curve in keeping and caring for them as you will see below, but all in all it is quite a lot of fun.  Ethan and Blair have even set up chairs near the chicken coop and settle in at cocktail hour during the summer months to watch "chicken tv."

PURCHASING CHICKENS

Chickens can be purchased in a variety of ways.  We have purchased them by mail order on the Internet and through our local feed store.  Of course, you can also incubate an egg--Blair has done that too with Winnie's kindergarten class!  Since there are a variety of breeds, deciding which breed you want will probably be the hardest decision you will have to make.  Winnie and Blair chose Araucana chickens because of the color of their eggs which come in a variety of pastels.  I have heard that the color of the egg is linked to the color of their eyes, but we are still researching this.

You may find that there are certain conditions imposed when purchasing chickens both on the Internet and at your local feed store.   In New York State feed stores set purchases at a minimum of six chicks.  This is to prevent people from buying just one or two as Easter pets.  The Murray McMurray Hatchery on the Internet, from whom we have also purchased chicks, has said that when you purchase over 20 chicks you get a gift of a free chick.  Well it seems that the free chick is usually a rooster.  So if you happen to want an extra rooster this may be one way to do it. 

Please also note that you take ownership of chicks as early as one day after they hatch.  Since you will get a call without much notice from either the post office or the feed store that you're chicks have arrived, it is best to be prepared.  Our friends Margo and her brother John are still working on their timing, but more about that later.

Housing chicks

When chicks first arrive they are kept in the house (really).  [Check out the story entitled That Last Minute Call
The most recent arrival of chicks--April 2006in the Journal section of this site.]  They stay for about three weeks under a heat lamp in a cage with a bed of pine shavings.  It is best not to move them to the barn or coop until it is warm enough outside during the day and night to keep them comfortable.  You may still provide them with a heat lamp when they are moved, but resist the temptation to throw them out of the house to soon.  Like any infant they are quite vulnerable in their first few weeks and months.  Winnie and Blair have been very lucky and have only lost one chick. 

During these first few weeks they are eating quite a bit, growing like mad, learning to bond with one another and even learning to roost and take short leaps.  A dowel put across the cage acts as a training tool for both activities. 

The chicks that arrived just this past April (see picture right) are now the size of pigeons and are learning to venture out from the coop.

HOUSING CHICKENS

With the first batch of chickens, Blair went to a local garden center and bought a shed that she outfitted for  
Nesting boxes tripledchickens.  It turned out that the chicken operation got a little bit bigger than expected and the coop ended up being a little too small, but more about that later.  Nesting boxes and roosts were also purchased.  Originally the shed was not electrified and it turned out that electric water heaters were needed in the winter to prevent the water from freezing so Blair ran extension cords from the barn.  The first chicken run that was created was also smaller at about 30'x10' and it was covered.  The interesting thing about covering the run was that the chickens didn't really learn how to fly even though they had the roosts.  It wasn't until the second coop was installed and the run enlarged and uncovered that the first batch of chickens learned to fly.

Well, Ethan got involved with the second batch of chickens and the project got a whole lot bigger. The coop and run are now about triple the size, there are wall sockets for the hot water heaters, lighting for the chickens to keep them warm during the winter, heat lamps for the chicks, twice the number of nesting boxes and two types of roosts.  And the old coop is now used to store the feed.  All of these items can be purchased at your local feed store or online hatchery. 

NAMING CHICKENS

Naming chickens is half the fun of owning them and they definitely have personalities as you will note from the Journal section of this site.  The first batch of chickens, having arrived in June 2003, produced roosters Speckles and Parker.  Parker was named after Winnie's friend and then renamed Evil Parker once his true personality shone through, but to our knowledge Winnie's friend is not evil. 

Bebe has true personality and a broken beak.  She follows you around especially when you have corn and prefers to eat out of someone's hand.

Whitey, Blondine named after the sister of a French friend of the family, the Hester Twins and the Molly Twins came next.  And the naming continues.

Roosters & Laying Eggs

You do not need a rooster to produce eggs. You just need them to fertilize eggs if you are going to hatch them.  We do not hatch eggs because we want to control the number of roosters we get in order to maximize the number of eggs we get.  By purchasing chicks from feed stores or the Internet we are guaranteed not more than one rooster per order plus the gift if you order more than 20.  If you want to eat the chickens then more roosters would be acceptable.  Additionally, when purchasing chicks you are also guaranteed that they are being inoculated.  We believe this is one reason why we have had so few problems.

Chickens lay one large egg every 26 hours at anytime and frankly anywhere.  Every so often a tiny egg will be laid or an egg with no yolk.  For the most part, however, our employees are quite reliable and on schedule.

Feeding chickens

Feed for chickens is really quite easy.  The most important components of a chicken's diet are grit and oyster shells.  The grit keeps the gizzard functioning properly by acting to grind up the grains.  The ground up oyster shells or just feeding them their own egg shells will add calcium to their diet and help to keep their egg shells strong.  The chickens also eat layering pellets and corn feed.

As far as table scraps are concerned almost everything is game. As a rule of thumb, they like everything that can be grown in a garden in your region.  The few exceptions are onions, citrus and zucchini.  Leftover zucchini goes into the frittata; there's a use for everything!  Finally, they are also fed sunflower seeds because studies have shown that they help lower the cholesterol in the eggs. Not sure I would quote us on this just yet.  They receive absolutely no chemicals or drugs and are free-range.  We cannot say that they are organic because some of the table scraps they are fed are grown in a conventional manner.  You are what you eat eats.  And obvioulsy the chickens are competing with your compost heap so if you have both, one may get more attention than the other.

THE TAB

Chickens themselves are reasonable, all of their possessions are another matter.  It's kind of like kids.  The costs are very slightly offset by the farmer's market stand.  The bigger payoff is in trading eggs for other commodities and enjoying the birds themselves.  In effect, we are re-establishing an older, more stable currency once known as trade. 

CAPONS

The next bird project will be to raise our own Capons.  Stay tuned.

chick magnets

As you can see the startup of this chicken operation has been a lot of fun and the family is providing for itself and starting to contribute to our community.  Ethan often jokes that he has become a chick magnet because of his new found hobby.  He doesn't have a harem, but he does have his own flock.  And he has found that chickens have become a bonding opportunity when meeting new people; kind of like dog owners.  Once people who own chickens discover one another they seem to go on for hours sharing chick stories.